IN BRIEF / California

Senate Sends Record Bill to Assembly

A bill seeking to stop California's $41-billion recording industry from holding singers to long-term contracts is on its way to the state Assembly after clearing the Senate.

The Senate's 25-10 vote keeps the bill alive as the record industry and some of its biggest acts continue talks toward an agreement on reforming a longtime practice of the music business.

Recording artists complain that record companies lock hungry, naive artists into standard seven-album contracts that can last 15 years or longer. The recording industry, which won a 1987 exemption from state labor law, is California's only business to legally bind employees longer than seven years.